Complete Fictional Works of John Buchan (Illustrated)

by John Buchan

  The dark man straightened himself and passed a hand over his forehead.

  “I have a sore head, Sandy,” he groaned, “and my eyes blink when I try to read Alan Macdonnell’s cursed small maps. They are like a hen walking first in mud and then in snow. The Beaver Club madeira last night was a thought too potent. Faith, the Concern will have a braw year if our voyageurs cover the Pays d’en Haut as fast as we empty glasses to its prosperity.”

  The florid man laughed. “You were a bonny sight sitting on the floor at the Grand Voyage paddling like a fury with a pair of tongs. Man Sim, there was no shifting you. You said you were bound for Great Slave Lake and were running the Rapids of the Drowned. You got that from nephew Alan? Well, sore head or no, we must settle Alan’s business to-day. The man’s my own blood relation, but he’s as uncomfortable a body in the service as a catfish in a shoal of herrings. When I pressed the Concern to take him I thought he would settle down to be a decent bourgeois, as keen on his profits as the rest of them. Deil a chance! He doesn’t care a docken for the siller, and he’s as restless as a flea in a blanket. We tried him on the Churchill and he was away over the Portage la Loche to the Athabasca. We tried him on the Athabasca and the next heard of him was on the Peace. We tried him at Peace Point, and bless my soul if he doesn’t disappear for eighteen months, and bring back nothing but these scarts of the pen he calls his maps. An unprofitable servant, Sim, I say, though he’s my own sister’s son.”

  The man called Sim shook his head. “We’ll never make a trader of him, but I’m not so sure we may not make something better. He’s the kind of dog that finds game, even if he leaves it to others to bring back. And faith, Sandy! the Concern needs that kind of dog. There’s the Hudson’s Bay gentry keen to push us off the Saskatchewan, and the X. Y. lads driving us back from the north, and the Americans poaching our ground in the south. We’ve a mighty need for new territory, and your Alan may be the one to find it.”

  “You’ve talked with him? What’s his notion?”

  “He’s for crossing the mountains. He’s seen them from a hundred miles off, and they’ve affected his brain. You know how far ben he is with the tribes. He’s lived with them and talked with them — all the outland folk, like the Beavers and the Piegans and the Slaves, and queerer ones still at the very ends of the earth. Well, he’s heard tell from them of roads through the mountains, and of lands beyond them fair hotching with beaver and marten and maybe new kinds of fur not hitherto heard tell of. At the end is the sea and the coast, which the Spaniards claim. In that his story is correct, for I’ve word from home that my Lords of the Admiralty have got their eye on that quarter.”

  “Whereabouts does he want to cross the mountains?”

  “He’s changed his view. First he had a notion that the easiest route was up the Peace river; but further enquiries made him less certain of it. Then he was for a place far up in the north in the Slave country called the River of the Mountains. (This, I think, must have been the Liard.) But now he has a new plan. His road is the Athabasca, for he has heard there’s an easy pass to the west. That’s not our information, for we’ve been told that the Athabasca high up is nothing but a fearsome torrent in which no canoe can live, and that it comes out of a muckle mountain of ice. But he’s besotted on the idea, and nothing will shake him.”

  “The man’s mad, though I say it that shouldn’t,” said the other. “Aye been. The Macdonnells are as daft as a yett in a high wind. You know about his forebears? They were close kin to Clanranald, and after Culloden had to shift out of Scotland to save their necks. Wild Jacobites, every one of them. They settled in the Carolinas, and Alan’s grandfather made himself a comfortable little property. But Alan’s father had the daft strain in his blood. He went west to the Mississippi and never came back, and when the war began nothing would content Alan but to fight on the side of the British and lose every stick and stone he possessed. He and his black servant Hector came for refuge to Canada and the rest you ken.”

  The sallow man gathered the charts into a bundle. “Mad or no,” he said, “I’m for using him. I propose we send him with the new Brigade and post him at the west end of the Saskatchewan. We’ll give him Davie Murchison as his assistant to attend to business, and if he has a notion to take a look at the mountains we’ll turn a blind eye. The pointer dog may find us game. What do you say to having him in?

  He’s waiting in the Deputy-Commissioner’s room. Lord! lord! but I have a sore head!”

  The man who answered the summons was half a foot shorter than the two chiefs of the Nor’- West Company and a decade younger — little more than thirty, perhaps, though the deep lines of his face and the network round his eyes told of a hard youth. He wore his own hair, which was black as a sloe, and his clothes, since he was for the time a city dweller, were of the latest fashion which Montreal could provide. In particular he had a scarlet waistcoat edged with silver lace. But his lean body, with no ounce of unnecessary flesh, the beaten bronze of his complexion, and the smouldering fire in his eyes gave the lie to his finery. Here was one who was happier in the wilds than on a city pavement. His two superiors were hard, active fellows, but compared to him they looked soft and lethargic.

  Donald knew that this was great-uncle Alan. He knew also that this was the man who had been behind him when he looked out on the Scots islands. The voice was familiar, but how he could not tell. It had a soft Highland lilt in it, and now and then Alan would slip into the Gaelic and be answered by one or the other in the same tongue.

  It was a friendly talk, more like a gossip of equals than the instructions of master to servant. Throughout there was the courtesy of the Gael. Alan was to go with the Brigade to the North Saskatchewan, and at a certain point on its head waters, in the foothills of the mountains, to complete a new fort of which the foundations had been laid the year before. It would be known as Knoydart House, out of compliment to its maker.

  “Keep your eye on the Bay men,” he was told. “They have a place on the Red Deer, a score of miles off, and there’s word that they purpose to set up another for the Blackfoot trade still nearer you. But at that job our voyageurs should beat their clumsy Orkneymen.... You will finish the fort before the winter and have the dark months to look round you for trade next spring....” The sallow man stopped, and there was a suspicion of a twinkle in his eye.

  Alan saw it and laughed. He understood what it meant.

  “I will do your bidding, sirs,” he said. “Next spring I’ll continue to look round, and by God’s grace extend the circuit of my observations. Some day I may have a fine story for your ears.”

  After this the pictures came fast, and Donald held his breath as he watched the details of Montreal’s annual venture into the wilderness. He saw each stage in the progress of the Brigade: the procession of carts which carried the stuff past the Lachine rapids; the big canoes and the bateaux which bore goods and men up the St. Lawrence and through the great lakes and over the portages at Niagara and Sault St. Marie, till Thunder Bay was reached and the start of the route to the north. There Alan Macdonnell and his party changed into the light northern canoes, and by way of Rainy Lake and the Lake of the Woods came to Lake Winnipeg. After that they went north to where the Saskatchewan entered that lake, and then, with many portages, up that noble river past stations of the Bay men and of the Nor’-Westers, past the big fork where the southern branch came in — endless days in the deep trench of the river-bed, till the banks grew shallower, and over the poplar scrub rose the green ridges of the foothills.

  Donald saw the voyageurs reel off the miles with their tireless paddling — a stroke a second and twelve hours’ work in the day. The canoemen were not the mangeurs de lard — the pork eaters of the St. Lawrence; but folk who summered and wintered in the wilds and knew every trick of white water. They were a small race — otherwise they could not have fitted into the canoes — lean, short-legged, but with brawny arms and enormous shoulders; each had his nickname, and one of surpassing ugliness, whose fac
e had been slapped by a bear, was known as “Pretty Maid.” A merry race, too, who never stopped singing while they toiled, and at night in camp when they had finished supper made the woods ring with their glees. There was music all the way, for Hector, Alan’s black servant, was a piper, and when they approached a fort would play a sprig to announce their advent — not “The Campbells are Coming,” which the Bay men affected, but some quick-step of the honest clans.

  They came to Knoydart House in a warm September afternoon, and were welcomed by Davie Murchison, who had been holding the fort all summer. Then, before the snows began, there was a busy season. The ground had been already cleared and a stockade built, and the task now was to erect storehouse and dwelling-house and quarters for the men. The voyageurs were expert at the job; the logs from the woods were so grooved that they needed no nails to keep them in position. The interiors were lined with a white clay which made an excellent plaster, floors were levelled, windows were glazed with oiled deerskin, great chimneys and hearths were built, in which an ox could have been roasted. Last of all, a tall pine was set up and the flag of the Nor’-West broken from the pole, while Hector blew manfully on his pipes.

  Then it seemed to Donald that he saw winter settle down on the fort. Though the Bay had posts very near, the rivalry was not serious, for the voyageurs knew better the ways of the people and the land than the raw Orkneymen. The Nor’-West packed its goods in light bales with waterproof coverings, while the Bay had theirs in clumsy great casks wrapped in rotten canvas, so that they had always to be opening and drying their stuff. The Orkneymen had not the Frenchmen’s extra sense for difficult water. More, they were not so close to the Indian mind. They might do well enough with the Crees of the Churchill swamps and with the Blood and Blackfoot clans of the prairies, but in the foothills they were in a strange land. Alan had a light hand with the voyageurs and was well served. Sometimes he used to curse them in Latin, a speech which they respected as the only tongue which the Devil could not understand.

  It was an open winter, for the chinook wind came often to raise the temperature and melt the snow. With the New Year, Alan, having finished his main task, handed over to Davie Murchison and began to explore the countryside. He and Hector moved on snow-shoes, and food and bedding were carried on sledges drawn by a team of dogs, which they drove fanwise and not in the tandem fashion of the eastern forests. He visited the hunting camps of the Piegans, tucked into the crannies of the foothills, and bought from them deer meat and bear meat and buffalo meat for the fort. And always, wherever he went, he talked to the Indians of the passes in the mountains, especially of one pass that led straight to the setting sun. He had long had news of it — the voyageurs called it the Tête Jaune — and now he could plan the road to it. It was to be reached not by the Saskatchewan, his own river, but by the far northern Athabasca. His travels took him close up to the knees of the mountains, and one blue day he saw in a great semicircle the white peaks which crowded about the Tête Jaune. On that occasion Hector caught up his pipes and played “The Faraway Hills.” On the first day of April Alan said good-bye to Knoydart House. He gave Davie Murchison instructions about getting off the Knoydart contingent of the east-going Brigade for the grand rendezvous at Thunder Bay. “I will send back word if I get a chance,” he said, “and will myself return, if God permits, before the winter.” He took Hector with him and four Piegans, one of whom had crossed the mountains and knew something of the language of the mountain tribes. Three of the voyageurs were to accompany the party to the divide, to take back the dog teams which would be useless in the upper glens.

  They set out in bleak weather, the last snow flurries of winter, and now for the first time Donald could study Alan’s face. Funnily enough he seemed to have known it all his life. It was a young face, much battered by weather, with dancing brown eyes, like the eddies in a peat stream, and a mouth which, though stern in repose, had a laugh lurking at its comers. This was the kind of man Donald felt that he would choose above all others to go travelling with.

  The snow was deep and firm until they were inside the white fangs of the hills. A broad strath took them to the summit of the Tête Jaune, beyond which the waters ran southward or westward. Thence the dogs were sent back to Knoydart House, but one of the voyageurs, Pierre Laframboise, begged that he might continue the journey, having a wish, he said, to see what happened to the setting sun.

  They made a lobstick at the head of the pass by trimming a fir until its topmost branches were bunched like a toadstool — this as a landmark and a memorial. Then Alan and Hector and Pierre and the four Piegans back-packed their stores, and started to blaze a trail to the west.

  It was a slow and toilsome job, for spring came on them like a thunderclap. The snow melted into mud, the hillsides dissolved into water, and every stream was a torrent. Alan was a martinet, and would suffer no deviation from the western route, though the trend of the waters was to the southward. There was much weary climbing of lateral ridges, sometimes by deer path, sometimes by Indian trail, most often by a track hewn through a virgin jungle. The larches were greening and the spring flowers had made a bright carpet in the upland meadows when at last they came to a valley with a strong river flowing honestly westward. That night Hector’s pipes played “The Glen is Mine.”

  The time was over for back-packing, and boats must be built. This was a job for the Piegans. There was no birch of any size to be had, so the craft must be made not of bark but of skins. Alan shot the needed number of bull moose, and the hides were cunningly prepared by Pierre. The frames of the two canoes were of cedar, as were the paddles, the skins were sewn together with cords made from the roots of spruce, and the caulking was done with melted pine-gum.

  Pierre, who had his countrymen’s eye for colour, managed to manufacture a paint from certain roots and leaves, and decorated the high prows with red, white, and green. The work meant a fortnight’s delay, during which Alan went hunting to replenish the camp larder. Pemmican was made by Pierre, good pemmican, for it was rich in fat and plentifully sprinkled with berries.

  Summer was now upon them, and to Donald’s eyes the little party, as it descended the broad stream, which somehow he knew to be the Fraser, seemed to be creeping daily into a land of richer greenery and brighter sunshine. Winter clothes were shed, and in the daytime they were half-naked, though in the evening the ravenous flies forced them again into their garments. They found human occupants in the land — Carrier tribes, who were friendly enough and who conversed with the Piegan who had a smattering of their speech. They were not a far-travelled folk and knew little of the land beyond their tribal bounds; but they had heard of the Great Bitter Water; this river ran into it, they said, but after a violent course, which one of them described by flinging himself on the ground and kicking his heels in the air. This warning was not what decided Alan. He was like a man following an oracle, for nothing would content him but a straight road to the west. So when they came to the point where the Fraser swung to the south, he left it unhesitatingly and directed the canoes up an east-running tributary. He would not deviate one mile from his path into the sunset.

  They were in the heats of summer, heats broken by violent thunder-storms and occasional days of mist and drizzle. So far good fortune had attended them, but now their luck changed. They were in a country of small streams linking up big lakes, and that meant long portages. Their first disaster was that the Piegans left them. The Babine Indians, whose country they were now traversing, were a peaceable race, ready to help the travellers; but it would have been better had they been warlike and menacing. The Piegan who spoke the mountain tongues was their undoing. For the Indians of the plains have not the magic of the hills and they fear what they do not know. The Babines told them tales of warlocks and witches and of vampires and werewolves and ravening animal spirits which turned their joints into water. There came a day when they announced that they could go no farther into this ill-omened land, a land of bottomless mires, and moss-hung forests, and mou
ntains which crumbled. There was no dissuading them. Alan wrote a letter to Davie Murchison giving him news of the journey, but it was never delivered, for the Piegans, being unused to white water, perished in one of the Fraser rapids.

  This was bad, but worse was the death of Pierre the voyageur. There came a week of heart-breaking toil, when the company, lacking the stalwart Piegans, whose loss was ill supplied by the dwarfish Babines, struggled over the last divide to the Skeena and the Pacific. There were long portages through forests full of tall decayed timber, where it took an hour for the axes to hew a yard of trail. Maddened by flies, sick with fatigue, choking with the miasma of the rotting woodlands, the party had all but reached their goal, an inky black lake which emptied towards the new watershed. Then suddenly out of the air came death. A fallen tree had been caught in a crotch of a neighbour and the passage of the men shook it loose, so that it crashed upon their rear, breaking Pierre’s back like a dry twig. The stern of one of the boats was also damaged, and it took Alan three days’ labour to mend it.

  One boat was cached by the lake shore, and the other, containing Alan, Hector, and four of the Babines, began the long descent to the Pacific. It was now early autumn, and in that country where there were no maples, the woods became a delicate harmony in yellow — orange and saffron and gold.... Donald observed a change in his kinsman’s looks. The labours of the last portages had taken heavy toll of his strength, and he had become very lean and grey in the face. Food he scarcely touched, and he spoke little, except to give orders. No more snatches of song, with which he had once cheered the road, and when Hector would have got out his pipes a frown forbade him. The man seemed to be in a fever, eager to be on the move and in terror lest he should be impeded. He might have been a fugitive with the avenger of blood behind him.

  Forest creeks gave place to hill streams as they slipped from the tableland to the sea. Presently they were in the jaws of the Coast mountains, a strait funnel between peaks which ran up to eternal snows. Their Babine guides at night brought some of the Tsimshian Indians to their bivouac, and since Alan had a few words of the Babine tongue he could ask questions. But he had only one. How far were they from the Great Bitter Water? How near to the Ultimate Islands? Mostly he got shaken heads for a reply, but one man apparently understood him, and with a stick drew a plan on the shore gravel.